I have used Microsoft Outlook for most of my computing life at home as well as at various professional positions. Outlook’s format is very easy to use and using rules to move mail to particular folders works well. This helps me keep organized. I also like the follow up flags and tasks. I can sync the tasks, calendar etc with the iPhone. There is a previous post on using tasks with the iPhone if you are interested. I run my own mail server and use ASSP as my spam solution. I don’t really keep up with recompiling the spam database so, more regular emails get trapped in the spam folder than I would like. The one feature that is missing is instant search. With Outlook 2007, Microsoft created Windows Desktop Search, which searches folders, emails and has filters for pdfs, zip files, docs, spreadsheets, text files etc… More often than not, the search product slows down my computer to a halt and often crashes it. I have tried version 3.0 and 4.0 with mixed results. Bear in mind, that my computer is an Athlon 3200+ with 1.5GB RAM, which is fairly old. I also tried google desktop search. Searching mail and files was very easy. The interface is very similar to the Web Search and results from the Web were sometimes included in the results. That feature can be turned off. The googleupdate kept crashing me computer when attempting to update itself. Chrome doesn’t try to update itself, so I have not had any issues with that.
Long story short, having instant search on mail is something I really need. But also having it on a web based platform, is incredible. The labels and conversation linking are a few of the features in addition to the search that make Google Apps / Gmail a superior product. I have also enabled some google labs features like additional stars, tasks and flickr previews.
Now, that I am hooked it’s time to get folks off my email platform and onto Google Apps!
